


Rage

by Stylin_Breeze



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Anger, Angst, Emotions, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Running Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 06:45:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13921578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stylin_Breeze/pseuds/Stylin_Breeze
Summary: Noya was pissed and didn't know why. And that made it all the more infuriating.





	Rage

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to all the times we've been angry and could do nothing about it.

Noya was pissed, and he didn't know why. And that made it all the more infuriating.

The rhythmic pounding of the volleyball from his palms to the wall of Fukurodani High School's gymnasium did little to calm what he now called his "rage." At this point, frustration had set in over not knowing the cause of his mood, as well as ire at himself and his insubordinate emotions for everything that had happened.

It started during the last training match of their camp hosted by Fukurodani. The other teams had already called it a day, but Nekoma and Karasuno insisted on one more round.

And then it started. Maybe it was that one serve he missed or that Russian blocker's surprise dump. But in any case, during that last game, Noya suddenly found himself beset by a curdling, irrepressible hate. He tried to throw himself into the game more, becoming more determined to get every dig, every block. But as his focus clouded, so did his precision. Suddenly even the easiest receives shanked awkwardly off his arms. He swore passionately he'd get the next one, but each time he'd come up short, aggravating him the more. As Karasuno's lead depleted, finally Ukai called time, and to Noya's shock, he saw he was being pulled from the game.

Ukai said not a word after benching the libero, convinced this was an issue to be resolved off the court with his undivided attention. Noya spun a spare ball in his palms mechanically. His teammates carried on the game competently and pragmatically, as if gloating that they didn't need Nishinoya after all. His palms slammed into the ball's apexes and pressed, compressing the sphere around its poles. As his biceps pulsed the bicolor ball morphed almost into an hourglass. Nishinoya hoped it would pop like a balloon.

And then to his amazement it did. The raucous implosion of air escaping the rubber made Inuoka stumble and miss a spike. Rubber shrapnel sprinkled the floor around Nishinoya, now the subject of everyone's gaze. Kuroo snickered behind his fingers. Ukai could only gawk before rubbing his hand across his face in humility. Noya couldn't say anything. He tightened his fists and marched out of the gym. He stomped in defiance of everyone's judgmental stares. On the dirt he paced down the side of the gym.

"Nishinoya!" Noya halted, chin to his chest ignoring Takeda's address. "Something's bothering you. What is it?"

Takeda liked to play the hero with the right thing to say, but right now, Noya didn't want it. He was in no mood to talk and decided to make sure he knew it.

As soon as his expletive-laden diatribe escaped his mouth, Noya felt a moment of sobriety as he realized what he'd done. Appearing literally traumatized, Takeda's face contorted as if he had never heard a curse word before, let alone directed to him from a teenager. By the gym's egress, Hinata, Daichi, and Asahi gaped, all three concerned about their libero but now either reticent or in shock. Nishinoya growled. He wanted to apologize but couldn't under the circumstances. So he ran away.

Noya spent the next hour kicking sidewalk litter as he explored the neighborhood around Fukurodani. He didn't care that he was in his volleyball uniform or that it was a little nippy out. Passersby—urbanite strangers—gave him odd looks but remained absorbed in their comings and goings. Noya hated their self-satisfaction. He wanted to hide in a shop until his fury subsided but was afraid if he went into a store he'd punch out a shelf. Finally he found the shade of a park tree obscuring the sunset and sprawled beneath it. He replayed the horrendous outburst at their undeserving teacher over and over, wanting to scream but restraining himself to not draw attention. It was Takeda's fault, he told himself, for bothering to pursue Nishinoya in the first place. But no matter how much he said that, he couldn't make himself believe it, and it didn't suppress his rage anyway. He tried focusing on the evening winter chill that scratched his skin, closing his eyes to everything. Where were his teammates? he wondered. Perhaps they didn't care? After all, this was just some moodiness, no excuse for Noya's poor performance and no reason for his so-called friends to show pity towards him. They had every right to leave Noya alone to sort out his own problems.

He wanted to stay in the park all night, but two patrolling police officers in the dusk startled him. Noya skipped up a tree, not sure why he was hiding. He wondered if his team sent the two cops to find him, not because they actually wanted him back but because they wanted to rub in how stupid Noya was. Nishinoya wouldn't let them revel in such joy, but with the chill getting a little more unbearable, he convinced himself it'd be even better to return to the dorm when they _didn't_ want him and also spoil their amusement of seeing him dragged back.

It took an hour to find the high school again. Upon sliding through the main doors of the clubhouse where the teams were staying, Noya found Ukai smoking a cigarette in a lobby chair, nonchalantly flipping through a magazine.

"'Bout time," the coach said without eye contact. Nishinoya didn't want to hear it. He buzzed past and returned to his room. He didn't shower, he didn't eat. He simply tumbled onto the comforter in his uniform and curled up. Walking away from Ukai was rude, but Noya tried not to care. His forehead ached with angst and sweeping generalizations about the people in his life. His heart pulsed in tune with the anger in his chest, now so acute even the moon's glint around the blinds was an object of scorn. Even more infuriating, none of his teammates had bothered to drop by to check on him. Obviously they really didn't care.

Unbeknownst to Nishinoya, Karasuno's players had camped out in the adjacent room of the lobby, hoping to welcome Noya back in open arms. But the libero was too quick in ignoring Ukai and soon the coach ushered the loiterers to bed, saying they'd talk to Nishinoya in the morning. Even so, all of them yearned to see Noya now, to show him they cared, especially Asahi. While the others gave in to fear and apathy, Asahi found himself hovering outside Nishinoya's door. He begged himself to knock, but as the clock ticked past 9, he couldn't do it and slinked away himself to bed.

Nishinoya thought he had sensed a presence outside his door for a fair while. He waited for the apparition to announce itself with a knock or word, but then the specter's presence just sort of vanished. Good, the irritable libero thought. Now he could sleep.

As time ticked by though, he found himself aching to apologize to Takeda, to Ukai, to his team, to Nekoma, and even to Fukurodani's coach for the ball, but the late hour convinced him it was too inappropriate—a catch-22 that inflamed Nishinoya even more. Sleep was futile. After the clock passed 11, he resolved to do something else. Still dressed in his gaily orange uniform, he snuck out of the room (unsure why he was so afraid of being caught) and over to the gym. He nabbed a volleyball from the storeroom and began the cyclic game of catch with the wall that he continued even now. It helped only to keep his mind focused on one thought at a time, though often his thoughts amounted to a full replay of the day's events. With each time he relived the day, the surmounting guilt became less potent, and so his rage seemed to subside somewhat—till recalling each cuss word levied at Takeda conjured not anger but an amoral numbness. He couldn't keep doing this, though, he told himself. He couldn't keep banging the volleyball against the wall the rest of his life, even if he couldn't imagine a rational reason why. And that made the rage come back.

"Noya."

Nishinoya caught the wall's serve then stretched his head round his neck toward the gym doorway. Asahi, in a T-shirt and pajama pants, occupied the threshold.

"Bout time," Noya levied, intentionally mimicking his coach. Asahi's presence might normally have been a comfort, yet right now, everything about their ace—his face, body posture, countenance, and existence—made him sick.

"Throw me the ball," Asahi commanded stepping into the court. Noya launched it roughly, taking the air out of Asahi's chest when he caught it. Azumane wanted to react but stayed himself. He was here for a reason.

Asahi sauntered onto the lined court and, even though the net had been taken down, served the ball. Nishinoya halfheartedly sprinted—not from lack of desire but lack of focus—his fists deflecting the ball far afield until it bounced out of bounds. Nishinoya scoffed.

"What's bothering you? You can at least tell me."

No, he couldn't. The great libero Yuu Nishinoya couldn't complain that his problem was "he was angry." His blood broiled at the inescapability of his own predicament.

Without a reply, Asahi marched across the imaginary net and until he towered above the team's shortest player. Nishinoya returned with an eagle eye from a foot below.

"What?" Noya challenged. The question was both an attempt to affront Asahi into leaving and a plea for Asahi to somehow help.

Asahi ignored the consternation and instead sat down and cross his legs, his face now a foot below Noya's. Noya ignored the silent invitation to sit and moseyed away, his rage strangely more easily repressible but still just as flaring. The third-year remained stoic, patient. Noya spat. Nobody could fix his problem, and he wished Asahi wouldn't try.

"Why don't you get lost?" Noya sniped. After all, Asahi had interrupted a rousing game of catch with the wall.

"Why are you acting like this? We're all worried about you."

Nishinoya gazed at the catwalk encircling the gym like their own back home, hands in his pockets and posterior to his teammate.

"You don't care!" Noya protested spinning around to Asahi. It was the only thing he could think to say to make Asahi get lost.

"Of course I do!" the other boy bellowed rising to his feet, his fingers curling in a fist. He had never seen Noya deploy such a high wall before.

Noya shrank back, almost skeptical of Asahi's determination.

"If you don't want to tell me, at least tell Ukai that you'll get over it." Asahi's voice cracked under the realization that, despite their relationship, at this moment he was not a person Noya trusted. Noya wanted to apologize and divulge everything, but the fury in his heart convinced him Asahi was simply too soft to take it. "And apologize to Takeda," Asahi pleaded.

His lips wanted to call Takeda an imbecile, but Noya's soul, in a futile attempt at maintaining his sanity, strangulated the urge.

The pair stood silently for several moments, Asahi hunching, Nishinoya's arms folded like a no-nonsense principal. It was hopeless, Asahi resolved, his eyes squinting with the urge to weep. His stomach felt like it'd collapse in on itself. For even that moment, as Noya's distrust persisted, he wondered if the old Nishinoya would ever return.

He rotated slowly and slumped toward the exit.

A clasping voice pounded in Noya's throat for Asahi to stay, but he held firm in restraining it. Noya tried to justify to himself that blowing off Asahi was a feat of fortitude, stifling his whining conscience. His rage told himself he didn't like Asahi and never had. The guy was a wimpy, clumsy, unshaven oaf. He turned his back and resumed admiring his new favorite spiker, the wall.

Asahi floated in the threshold for several moments, fists trembling erratically. Thoughts of positive memories with Nishinoya flooded in, watering up Asahi's eyes. Obviously Nishinoya was angry for something, and under the circumstances, he believed it could only be one thing.

"Is it me?" Asahi's voice whined as his fist faintly bashed the frame of the door. Noya's vise grip posture shattered as he spun to face Asahi. "You hate me, don't you?"

Noya didn't know where this was coming from, but for the first time that day, even the rage in his heart had no kneejerk response.

"So, maybe I'm not as good as you…. Maybe I'm not," Asahi rambled, his chin indenting his chest, his eyes wrinkling painfully.

Nishinoya's arms drooped. "Yeah, I hate you," is what he wanted to scream. But it wasn't the truth, and he knew it. Noya gaped at Asahi trying to make sense of Nishinoya's disorder no less than Nishinoya himself was. He found himself wanting to reach out a hand and touch Asahi's back to soothe him.

His throat lumpy, Asahi rubbed the back of his head. "I'm not making sense, and you know I'm just being stupid," he lamented, unable to find anything else to say.

"No, you're not stupid," resounded inside Noya's brain, but it still couldn't reach his vocal chords. On the court, Noya might have taken all the blame and called himself stupid, but in this weird state, that felt somehow dishonest. He didn't know what was going on, and he felt incapable of truly apologizing as long as he didn't understand his emotions, now pounding around inside his chest. Nishinoya didn't know if he'd ever feel better actually. Even so, he wanted Asahi to know this wasn't his doing.

"I'm sorry."

Noya was surprised those were the words that came out of his mouth. Asahi flinched then glanced warily at his teammate. Nishinoya trembled, his body losing all stability until finally, against his will, he collapsed to his knees, mouth moaning, eyes watering. He curled forward, his head pressing into his thighs as he sobbed, repeating the two words mindlessly until they were lost amidst the wailing in his throat. Muscle commands to regain his composure were futile. His eyes, limbs, and vocal chords had minds of their own. He didn't want to act like this. He didn't want this sorry state to be the way he dealt with his suffocating passions. Yet somehow, strangely, his anger was quieted for the meanwhile.

Suddenly he felt a sweaty yet gentle pressure on his hair. His skull arched up to see the source of the touch, beholding Asahi's somber visage watching over him. Asahi didn't know what to do at that moment, and for a brief second, Noya hated him for even that too. But then two hands gripped either one of Noya's shoulders and hoisted the smaller boy up.

Instantly Nishinoya's sweat-encrusted uniform squeezed into Asahi's T-shirt. The larger man's burly arms dug tightly into Noya's shoulder blades while the gentle but niggling prickle of the larger man's stubble nicked the back of the younger boy's neck. Nishinoya's tears stopped amidst the grip, now aware of a pain in his waist as Asahi practically bent the libero ninety-degrees at the hip. But the warm embrace, filling Nishinoya's body with unspeakable heat and comfort that subdued the pain in his chest, made the physical pain not worth abating. Noya wanted to wrap his own arms around Asahi, but found his arms practically immobilized by Asahi's triceps. Still, Noya wanted dearly to somehow reciprocate this warmth—and that desire _was_ worth fighting Asahi's snare.

His shoulders wriggled until Asahi's grip loosened, and then Nishinoya went in for the attack. His arms darted around Asahi's wait, one hand clasping the opposite wrist to prevent flight. Nishinoya took the chance to more comfortably position his legs and dug his visage into Asahi's chest. The tears resumed. Asahi's arms levitated around Noya's whimpering form until he finally cuddled the usually cocksure libero. Noya coughed and choked persistently. He wished to tug Asahi's torso to the floor to alleviate the remaining discomfort in his hip, but his prey was too strong to be budged. Asahi instead set a hand against Noya's head and rested his own chin against the side of the libero's skullcap. Nishinoya couldn't feel his rage anymore and still didn't know what he'd been so angry about in the first place.

But right now, he didn't want this embrace to end. Not for fear that his anger would return but for love of the moment itself.


End file.
